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A federal jury in California has cleared Google of allegations that it infringed on two patents held by software firm Oracle, in the design of its Android mobile operating system, Bloomberg reports.

"Today's jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle's patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem," Catherine Lacavera, Google's director of litigation, said in a statement.

The verdict ends the second phase of a three-part intellectual property trial that is apparently not going well for Oracle. The software company filed suit in August 2010, seeking as much as $6 billion in damages, alleging that Google had infringed on its copyrights and patents in designing Android.

"Oracle presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java," said Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger.

The copyright phase of the trial ended with a finding of infringement, but with the jury divided on whether Google's "fair use" claim to the material was valid. There could be a new trial to decide the fair use issue. Without a finding against Google on this issue, Oracle is substantially limited in the damages it can seek.

Also on the horizon is a ruling from U.S. District Judge William Alsup on the question of whether the Java programming language, which was at issue in the case, is subject to copyright law.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says Google was in compliance with European Union antitrust rules, and says a meeting has been planned with E.U. antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia to discuss his preliminary finding, the Guardian reports.

"He is encouraging us to have a conversation," the Guardian quotes Schmidt as saying at a Google event in Britain. "We completely agree [to a conversation]. We disagree that we are in violation. Until they are precise about what areas of the law we have violated, it will be very difficult for me to speculate."

While Schmidt may be reluctant to speculate, National Journal and others have reported on a scholarly paper sponsored by Google that takes a detailed and skeptical look at some of the alleged antitrust violations against the search giant, and remedies proposed by Google's many critics.

Schmidt said that so far, the only notification Google has received is a letter from Almunia that reportedly offered a short timetable of a few weeks for a settlement.

Known for his aggressive efforts to combat government waste, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has set his sights on Google, questioning the use of a federal air base in California to park aircraft owned by Google executives.

In a letter Monday to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Grassley questioned whether the Google executives were paying a fair-market rate to park their aircraft at the Moffett Federal Airfield in Santa Clara County.

The airfield, located not far from Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, is operated by NASA's Ames Research Center. Grassley noted that NASA signed a 40-year lease in 2008 for the aircraft to use the airbase for $3.7 million a year.

"Whistleblowers have questioned the benefit to the U.S. government from the Google fleet being housed at Moffett Airfield," wrote Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley called on Bolden to provide information on the lease arrangement including whether the agency is charging fair-market rates for the use of the base and why NASA entered into the lease.

Google said it does not own the aircraft, which are instead owned by Google executives.

In a written response to Grassley, Ken Ambrose, vice president of H211, the company that negotiated the lease agreement with NASA, noted that the Google executives are paying above-market rates for the space they lease at the airfield. In addition, as part of the agreement, they also are required to conduct scientific flights for NASA and have conducted more than 150 such missions so far, he said.

"Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee has visited and been briefed on our operation and I encourage you to speak with him," Ambrose added.

Grassley, however, said Wednesday that he still has concerns about the lease arrangement and requested more details from Ambrose.

Grassley has been a dogged investigator of government waste, chastising the Justice Department last fall for $16 muffins at its conferences (it turns out the charge was actually for a full continental breakfast). In the 1980s, Grassley highlighted waste at the Pentagon when a probe he helped lead uncovered $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats.

Who is Google rooting for in the presidential race? Telecom analyst Paul Gallant of Guggenheim Securities suggests in a note to investors that a win by Mitt Romney could could mean less a favorable outcome for Google in the ongoing Federal Trade Commission probe.

While the FTC made news with the recent addition of of Beth Wilkinson to their legal team, Gallant argues that, "Google's fate may be more affected by the November presidential election than by the recent litigation hire."

Gallant cites the Republican ties of Google's foes in Washington, meaning Microsoft and other firms that have complained about Google's dominance in search. While it might be counterintuitive to expect a stronger antitrust posture from a Republican administration, in an interview Gallant said there's always a political component to these investigations.

In the end, Gallant expects Google to settle, but it's not clear what kind of settlement Google would go for. Google does not look like a company interested in disaggregating its e-commerce components from the search engine and mobile operating system, as its critics would prefer. The company just announced the release of an update to Google Maps for the Android mobile operating system that integrates coupons and discounts from Google Offers into maps. It's just this kind of bundling that has foes up in arms.

The European Union's top antitrust regulator said Thursday that no decision had been made about whether to charge Google with antitrust violations, Reuters reports.

"We are not in a hurry," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said. The investigation into Google's dominance of the search engine sector dates back to November 2010.

Almunia had previously indicated that a decision on whether to send Google a statement of objections could be expected after Europe's Easter holiday.

Despite waffling by federal regulators, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are renewing scrutiny of Google's Street View program, which for several years collected private wireless communications.

The latest round of attention comes after the Federal Communications Commission fined Google for not cooperating but declined to rule that the tech giant had broken any laws.

"Google needs to fully explain to Congress and the public what it knew about the collection of data through its Street View program, why it impeded the FCC investigation, and what it is doing to ensure appropriate privacy safeguards are in place to protect consumers' personal information," Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass said in statement.

Google, which is facing a separate antitrust probe by the Federal Trade Commission into the dominance of its search engine, uses data about wireless networks to make its map services more accurate. What upset critics in the Street View case was that, in addition to taking pictures of streets and collecting basic Wi-Fi information, Google gathered private information.

The FCC report found that the project's lone engineer, referred to as "Engineer Doe" in government documents but identified by The New York Times as Marius Milner, shared his intentions with other employees but didn't discuss the privacy implications with company attorneys--and that Google's supervision of the project was minimal. However, the FCC joined the Justice Department and the FTC in determining that despite having collected personal information for two years, the Google program did not break any U.S. laws.

That hasn't pleased privacy advocates who say Google clearly broke wiretap laws. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, for example, says regulators haven't done enough to enforce current privacy laws. Lawmakers, meanwhile, say the inconclusive FCC report may raise more questions than it answers.

Markey called for hearings on the program, and Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., said Google officials, whose claims contradict some of the FCC's findings, need to come clean.

"Companies like yours - which are entrusted with very sensitive online data about our private lives - have a responsibility to honor the public's trust by being transparent with consumers and forthcoming with investigators when addressing privacy breach inquiries," Barrow wrote in a letter to Google on Thursday.

When the Google Street View case first surfaced in 2010, then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal joined other officials in pressing Google to turn over information about the program. Now a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blumenthal says that while it's debatable whether the company violated any laws, it's clear that action is required. "The issue is way bigger than Google," he said in an interview. "There is an urgent, immediate need for updated laws."

Blumenthal said he will press for a review of existing wiretap laws, but with little consensus, many competing interests, and the current skepticism on Capitol Hill toward legislation that constricts the free flow of information on the Web, it's highly unlikely that privacy legislation will move any time soon.

New York's attorney general is suing Sprint for $300 million, claiming the wireless carrier failed to collect and pay sales taxes since 2005, USA Today reports.

Facebook may go public on May 17, according to TechCrunch. But the company's COO makes sure she's out the door every evening on time, the Wall Street Journal blogs.

Verizon reported far fewer new mobile phone customers in the first quarter compared with a year ago, perhaps signaling a slowdown in the wireless market's growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Verizon is promising to put its marketing weight promoting the new Windows phone in hopes of developing a strong competitor to Apple and Google, Reuters reports.

All of today's e-Reads can be found on our Tech page.

Google CEO Larry Page was grilled on the stand at the trial over Oracle's patent lawsuit against Google related to its Android mobile phone software, according to the Associated Press.

Bloomberg details how the CEOs of Yahoo and Google have been bragging not about the new products they've launched but about ones they've killed.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion fired back against an app maker that stopped work on an app for the BlackBerry because of a slide in the device's popularity, the Wall Street Journal reports.

In a rare move, Google revealed details about the inner workings of its data center network, The New York Times reports.

Find all of today's e-Reads on our Tech Page.

With broadcast coverage of national political conventions waning, both parties are looking to Google to jazz up their 2012 confab.

As "Official Social Platform and Live Stream Provider", Google will provide a range of technology support for August's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla, including streaming live video, GOP convention organizers said on Friday. A Google spokesperson told Tech Daily Dose the company is working on a similar partnership for the Democratic National Convention.

"Google and YouTube are transforming the political process, providing voters an unprecedented degree of participation and, for the very first time, giving every American who has access to a computer, tablet, video gaming system, interactive television, or video-enabled smart-phone an exclusive backstage pass to the podium of a national political convention," Republican National Convention CEO, William Harris, said in a statement.

He said he hopes Google services like YouTube, Google Maps, and Google+ Hangouts will help give voters a "virtual front-row seat" at the convention.

It's not the first time Google has worked to highlight the 2012 campaign. In September it joined with Fox News to host a debate for Republican presidential candidates.

Google is coming under pressure to do more to ensure its online ads do not help promote sex-trafficking.

Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., wrote Google CEO Larry Page on Tuesday to find out what the online search and ad provider is doing to ensure it does not profit from the sale of ads related to sex trafficking.

"Whatever Google is doing or is not doing to prevent these sorts of advertisements from appearing on their properties, Google has not satisfied a significant number of human rights organizations who have a specialized understanding of how these ads contribute to the human trafficking of women and girls," the lawmakers wrote.

They called on Google to detail what it has done internally to block "sexually exploitative" ads and what the firm would do if it discovers that it is profiting from such ads.

The Blackburn-Maloney letter comes a week after the National Association of Human Trafficking Victim Advocates and other groups wrote the National Association of Attorneys General to investigate whether Google has profited from the sale of online adult-services ads.

"The online purveyors of the sex trade--modern day online pimps--are utilizing Google to drive massive volume through sites that are gateways to prostitution and the sex trade," the group said in the letter to the state attorneys general. "As the world's largest supplier of online advertising, Google is in a unique position to choke the supply chain that delivers women for sale through online sex trafficking."

Following a similar campaign two years ago, Craigslist dropped its "adult services" section from its online classified site after critics including several state attorneys general claimed that many of the ads in the section helped promote sexual exploitation.

A Google spokesman said the company bans ad for sex trafficking, child pornography and prostitution and deploys many resources to try to enforce it.

"We have invested millions of dollars in monitoring and enforcing this ban--using the latest technology as well as manual review by teams who are specially trained to get bad ads, and bad advertisers, off Google," the spokesman said. "But it's a constant battle against these bad actors so we are always looking at ways to improve our systems and practices, including by working with leading anti-trafficking organizations. We also look forward to working with others in the industry on this important issue."

Google, however, is not the only firm to come under fire recently over ads that promote sex trafficking. Village Voice Media's Backpage.com has been criticized for profiting from ads that critics say promote both sexual and human trafficking.

"Backpage.com is among the online Web sites that have been found to serve as a conduit for the buying and selling of human beings - not just prostitution (which is itself illegal in 49 out of 50 states), but more specifically the trafficking of minors," Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said in a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder.